


I Can Almost Taste You

by AquirsChan



Category: Fairy Tail, Persona Series
Genre: Everyone but the husbands are Persona users, F/M, Future children - Freeform, Hanahaki Disease, He doesn't remember that, Heartache, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Mutual-Pining, Natsu married and fucked a 16 year old., Natsu's Amnesia, Rachel is a Persona user, Seperation, underage marriage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2019-01-09 10:50:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12274869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AquirsChan/pseuds/AquirsChan
Summary: Her love for him represented Shepherd’s Purse. His love for her represented Arbutus. She’s pining for a man she hasn’t seen in 4 years. He pining for a girl he can’t even remember. Both have their loves’ flowers choking them to death.





	I Can Almost Taste You

Arbutus, I Love Only You

Natsu

 

Summary: Her love for him represented Shepherd’s Purse. His love for her represented Arbutus. She’s pining for a man she hasn’t seen in 4 years. He pining for a girl he can’t even remember. Both have their loves’ flowers choking them to death.

 

A/N: This is a side story to Legacy: A Grand Tournament. If you’ve read the story, you know that Natsu and Rachel married during his time on Tenrou Island. They later found each other when the Legacy kids went to compete in the Grand Magic Games. Natsu as a competitor and Rachel as moral support to her children.

 

But what happened during those times they were apart? How were the kids connected in their lives? What was Natsu’s relationship with the other Thieves and Legacies? Find out in this fic! I’m so sorry for being the stupidest human being alive.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It all started the day they got back.

 

Everyone was happy. They were celebrating their return with drinks and smiles on their faces. Natsu, for once, not roundhousing with Gray nor at the center of the party. He was standing to the side with his arms crossed and a joyful expression on his face. Happy wasn’t by his side, instead deciding to hang around Carla and Wendy. Life was great.

 

He sighed in contentment. He thought for a moment about Tenrou Island and all that had happened. And again looked at the party in front of him and grinned.  _ ‘Time to show them how really party! Man, it’s going to be the reception all over again!’  _ He paused in his tracks.

 

‘ _ Reception? Since when did I ever go to a fancy-schmancy thing like a reception? _ ’ Natsu tried to recall his memory, but any kind of memories he had about receptions were nonexistent.

 

He practically ran out of the building that was now Fairy Tail’s guild hall. Deaf to the yells of his friends as he picked up the pace and ran, not to his home, but to the Cathedral.

 

He panted for breath once he got there. The beautiful building stretched out it’s hall invitingly to him. He took another deep breath and sat down. Trying to clear his head and remember. 

 

‘ _ I know this is important! Why can’t I remember? _ ’ He thought as he wrung his hands. He stopped and stared at his hands. They were doing it by habit. He never used to do this. But as he stared at his intertwined hands, unnerved by the unusual things he was doing. His vision flashed, and he clutched his head in pain. Videos, memories, were flitting through his mind. Too fast for him to recognize any of them.

 

One memory, however, popped up to the front of his brain. He was sitting on a bench, watching a bunch of blurred blobs he recognized as children. Other blurs, adults or teens, laughed and talked to each other. Him included. He wrung his hands similarly to his actions at the church, and saw that a blur with the colors red, white and black swirled in her place. It cupped it’s hands around his and he stopped moving. It smiled and said in a distorted female voice, “It’s fine Natsu. The kids are fine. They can take care of themselves, and if they need help, we’re here.”

 

He intertwined his hands with hers as he said unwillingly, “You’re right #@%&*. I know that too. It’s just, hard to let go.” The blur sort of smiled and leaned forward. “And if you know. Just let it go.” She said in a rhyme as she kissed him on the cheek. And her final words made his heart stop in his chest. “I love you.” And his chest constricted.

 

He coughed and coughed and coughed into his hands. Splotches of blood falling from his mouth. He practically coughed for hours, until something else came out. He willed himself to stop coughing for a minute and raised it to his face. I was a lush, delicate white petal. And it was covered in his blood.

 

He stared in horror at the small, innocent petal that had fallen out of his mouth. And suddenly started hacking up more. The blood was no longer present, but the petals were. Constricting his throat and making his lungs burn. It wasn’t until he had a small pile on the floor that he stopped. He picked up a double handful and looked down at them, horrified beyond belief.

 

Arbutus, he realized, even though he had never seen the flower before. He decoded its meaning as the knife in his heart twisted even further. Arbutus meant that ‘I Will Love You Only’. He spilled the petals back onto the floor of the Cathedral and ran away towards his home.

 

He burst into the messy room and threw himself onto his hammock, crying his eyes into his pillow. He didn’t know what this “thing” was, but he felt the green vines and brown bark twisting and growing inside of him. He felt the flower the petals had come from try to bloom inside his throat. He knew the moment it bloomed into maturity, he would suffocate and die.

 

“I don’t wanna die.” He whispered fearfully. But he didn’t even know the cure. Clutching at his chest as the vines continued to grow. He almost laughed at the unfairness of it all. He knew this was something he couldn’t simply beat into submission. This was something else entirely. He stared down at the wooden floor with bloodshot eyes. Even though this “thing” was slowly killing him, it had something inside of it. It was warm, inviting and felt more like home than this house ever did.

 

‘ _ I’m in love with someone that I don’t even know. _ ’ He thought as he silently sobbed in heartache. Longing for someone he doesn’t even know about. The salty tears ran down his face as he began to cough up more of the white colored Arbutus petals. He felt them roll on his tongue as he watched them spill all over the floor.

 

They tasted bittersweet.

* * *

The next day he visited Porlyusica in her treehouse.

 

“What are you doing here you brat! Come to get some healing? Well I won’t give it to you!” She yelled at him the moment she opened the door. And she almost slammed it back into his face, if Natsu hadn’t slammed his body weight onto the door. He pleaded in a broken manner she had never heard before.

 

“Please Porlyusica. I don’t need any medicine if you don’t have it. I just need you to check out this thing or sickness or something. Just please!” He begged. The old hermit peeked out of her door a little more. “And just what makes this disease so important?” She asked, even though she didn’t want to find out. If it was enough to scare Natsu Dragneel of all people, it must be terrifying.

 

He started sobbing silently at her question. He started coughing harshly and repeatedly for a few minutes as she wondered what was going on. She had backed away from the door as it squeaked open, revealing Natsu. Mouth covered in blood and white petals in his hand. He smiled ruefully at her. “Granny? I think I’m dying.”

 

She immediately let him inside. Pushing him towards the bed and opening his mouth after cleaning it with a rag. Using a small lacrima, she peered down his throat and gasped in shock. A bundle of small buds, thin green vines and bark roots covered in thorns covered up his windpipe. The thorns were making him bleed a little, and she diagnosed that this was what was causing the bleeding. She removed the lacrima and stomped over to her books, searching for the disease she knew she had seen before as Natsu rubbed his extremely sore throat.

 

“I knew it.” She muttered darkly and sadly. She walked towards her patient and shoved the book under his nose. He stopped rubbing his throat and grabbed the book after a second’s hesitation. He read the diagnostic and dropped it in shock.

 

The book was left on a specific page. One that represented the Hanahaki Disease. It said:

 

_ “Hanahaki Disease is an illness born from a one-sided love, where the patient throws up and coughs up flower petals when they suffer from the one-sided love. The infection can be removed through surgery, but the feelings disappear along with the petals. Also, if they are reminded of their love after the surgery, the rebound of memories and feelings will be potent enough to kill them instantly. The only non-side effect cure only happens when the center of the one-sided love reciprocates the love of the patient.” _

 

Porlyusica watched on and tried to comfort him as he sobbed into his hands. Tears of fear and sadness crashed to the ground from his overflowing eyes. ‘ _ That’s why I have this? _ ’ He thought bitterly to himself. ‘ _ Because of some one-sided love with a girl I’ve never met?! That’s why I’m going to have to leave my nakama?! _ ’ He clenched his hands into fists, trying so hard to get angry, get mad, do  _ something _ ! But he just couldn’t. Everytime he tried, the one memory he had of her rose to the surface and reminded him of the three words he heard. “I love you.” He knew she loved him. But if she loved him, he shouldn’t have the Hanahaki Disease, right?!

 

He asked this question to Porlyusica, who looked at him sadly. She said, “It must be because you have no memory of her. The fact that you love her even though you don’t even know what she looks like, and that she loves you back, must make the flower more wholesome.” He looked up, confused. “You love her, and she loves you. And you don’t remember her. And the unconscious love you hold for her must be what’s creating the infection. Because you don’t remember her, you’ve given up and told yourself that your love will never be returned by someone who you can barely recall. If you don’t remember her before this disease kills you, or do the surgery, you will die.” She ended grimly.  

 

He wanted to deny it, so badly that it hurt. But he knew, deep down inside him, he knew that what she saying was true. Unless he remembered every memory of her, got the surgery, or found her and get her to love him back, he was a goner.

 

So he sniffled up his tears and said with a bright, soft smile to Porlyusica, “I won’t take the surgery.” Surprising her, thinking that he would go through anything to stay with his guild. “If this disease is real, that means that there’s someone out there who loves me. And other people love me too.” He stared at his bloodied hand resolutely. “I have another nakama out there. I know. I managed to recall one memory. There was a park. Children,  **our** children, were playing around while we talked and joked and laughed. If I have a family out there.” He clenched his hand into a fist and raised it to the sky. “I won’t forget them! I won’t turn my back on them just because I wanna live! I’ll take the hard road and stick on it until I find them!” With his vow sealed with his own lips, he bounded out of the treehouse and ran towards the guild hall. Towards his friends, who were unknowing to the fact that he signed his own death waiver.

* * *

A/N: And that’s it folks! First chapter of I Can Almost Taste You, a.k.a ICATY. This was fun to write. And sorry Legacy: A Grand Tournament, a.k.a L:AGT isn’t out yet. But this popped into mind first. But I won’t finish it until I finish Persona 5: My Modern Maid, the main crux of most of my stories.

 

I’ll try to update as much as I can, so thank you for reading! BUH BYE!!! 


End file.
